


Tiny Geometries

by imekitty



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 13:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16811983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imekitty/pseuds/imekitty
Summary: Danny is chased relentlessly until he collapses into Vlad's grasp.





	Tiny Geometries

The sky, the open air. He was above and beyond all and everyone. The manacles of gravity no longer restrained him. The walls of the world no longer barred him. The discomfort of vulnerable visibility no longer daunted him.

Almighty and free.

Past midnight, and Danny was not yet ready to return home. Gliding across the twinklings of the constellations, he was a shooting star breaking through the clouds lined with silver, their misty miasma dewing on his face.

This experience belonged to only him. No one else in this world could ever feel it, and no one could take it from him.

He was on a course to leap right over the moon.

A burst of heat and an eruption of light raced under him. Danny reflexively shot straight up, flipped and stared down at the blast of ectoplasmic energy that faded into the distance. Hands raised in defense and ready to attack, Danny turned to find a hulk of a ghost, robotic suit of metallic alloy and flaming hair of harlequin green.

"Skulker," said Danny flatly. Not a greeting, not an address, just a description.

"Enjoying your night flight, whelp?"

"I sure am. You being here doesn't change that." Danny focused his ectoplasmic core, summoned its spectral properties to his palms.

"I'm about to change a lot of things for you."

The vagueness of this threat caused to Danny to falter as he tried to make sense of it. A glowing net rushed toward him, and Danny only just barely flew out of its way.

Skulker was leering at him smugly. "Are you nervous?"

"Dream on." Danny focused a beam at Skulker, the most powerful he could muster. He wanted to end this quickly, wanted to return to his relaxing flight.

Skulker held up an arm and effortlessly deflected the jet of energy. Danny gaped before quickly regaining his composure, hoping that Skulker didn't see his momentary lapse of coolness.

"You're nervous now, aren't you?" Skulker crowed and tapped against his robotic arm which looked thicker than usual. "New upgrade."

Danny gritted his teeth. "I'll just have to aim for your face, then." Blast after blast, combinations of ectoplasm and ice, Danny threw everything he had at the hunter. Drawing closer, he directed a powerful punch right between Skulker's eyes.

With a sneer, Skulker grabbed his fist and brought him to a painful halt. He spun the half-ghost around, sent him twisting several meters away. Danny yelped and massaged his sore arm. He raised his eyes to see Skulker looking at him predatorily.

This wasn't over. He would not be the hunter's prize.

Eyes shut, fists clenched and held before him, he conjured all of his energy, prepared to let it all out in one scream that could not be deflected, his most lethal power, his ghostly wail.

With a swishing sound, something hard hit Danny in the face and wrapped around his arms and wrists, tangling and forcing them together. His concentration broken, Danny stared down at his captive arms, at the ghostly bolas ensnaring them. Unable to phase out of them, his breath caught and stole away.

So stunned, too stunned to realize that Skulker was now above him. Danny looked up just in time to see a blast of ectoplasm coming right for him.

Slammed, thrown, jolted, Danny bent backward with the force. He sped downward faster than terminal velocity, hit the ground with such intensity that his diaphragm was immediately paralyzed, an impact that would have surely killed him if he had not been in his ghost form.

On his back, hands still bound, he tried to suck in air, tried to relieve the painful convulsions of his winded chest. His head was spinning. His insides were churning and spasming. He turned on his side and retched, heaved, emptied the spectral contents of his trembling stomach, sickeningly green and glowing, the sticky ectoplasmic bile clinging to and dripping off his lips. He lay back and panted with labored gasps, his glands continuing to salivate and coat the inside of his mouth.

A hard thud. Danny could blearily see that Skulker had landed not too far away and was approaching him.

He couldn't stay here. His damaged body was aching for him to lie still, but his acute stress response was blaring and drowning it out. No way to fight now, not in this condition. He had to take flight.

He rolled over, pulled his legs up under him. Unbalanced and tripping, he managed to stand before flying away at top speed, his bound arms held under him. Vertigo gripped him the moment he was in the air, his dizzy head unable to handle the speed at which he was going, but if he slowed down, he'd be—

No, don't think about that. What Skulker would do to him—

He zipped through the town, tried to take every turn he saw in an attempt to lose Skulker. He moved and wriggled his arms in an attempt to untangle them from the weighted rope binding them. He looked forward in an attempt to maintain what little confidence he had left. Focusing ahead, he didn't dare turn around.

But he didn't need to. He could hear the hunter behind him, closing the gap, coming for him.

His body was starting to give out. He could feel his energy leaving him, his screaming mind losing command of his failing limbs. He was losing altitude, no longer flying but falling, careening out of control.

The skin of his face tore open. That was the most agonizing gash he felt, but there were other stinging slashes ripping all over him. He had flown straight into a tree, snarled in its thick branches that scraped at his skin. But no, that didn't make sense. They shouldn't be cutting him at all, not while he was transformed.

Unless...

He was losing the power to maintain his ghost form.

With no strength to turn intangible as he fell down through the tree, the branches snatched and clawed at him until he finally hit the ground underneath.

Still and quiet, nothing but the sound of stirring branches above him. Danny felt his molecules giving up the ghost and returning to their human state. Collapsed on his side, his useless arms stretched out beside him, too weak and in too much pain to move at all, Danny's ailing mind could not even fully comprehend the veracity of his defeat.

Surreal.

Weighty footsteps approached him. A bright ethereal glow filtered through his closed eyes. He shut them tighter, tears of anguish escaping him in steady streams. His panic and anxiety were swiftly being replaced with the grave realization of his imminent capture. Misery and fear, dread and humiliation.

He was being lifted. Danny could only let it happen.

But then he was down again, returned to the ground with a thud. The sounds of a struggle, the heat of ectoplasmic discharges, the familiar cries and shouts of not one but two ghosts. Danny wearily opened his eyes to see if it was true because no, it couldn't be true. No way he would be here, no way he would rescue him.

Vlad Plasmius. Vampiric teeth bared, bloody eyes focused, his caped enemy clashed with the metallic hunter. Danny watched for as long as he had the strength to keep his eyes open, stared in bewildered shock as Vlad duplicated himself and completely surrounded Skulker. Then the heaviness of his eyes overtook him, and he could only hear the rest of the fight. Grunts and strikes, bellows and swings.

And then only the sound of Vlad's deep breathing.

Danny tried to lift his head, but an onset of dizziness forced him back down. He felt Vlad approach him, kneel beside him…

…smooth back his hair…?

Danny moaned and opened his eyes just enough to see Vlad looking down at him with a frown, pushing hair away from his tear-stained face. His vapory cold fingers felt so good against Danny's fevered head.

"He did quite a number on you," Vlad observed in a murmur, perhaps more to himself than to Danny.

Danny closed his eyes again. He felt Vlad's arms go under him and lift him up, his back against one arm and his legs hanging over the other. Danny did not even have the strength to keep his head up as it fell back.

"Why…" he managed to sigh out, but he was unable to finish the question. Even with his eyes closed, he could sense that Vlad was looking down at him.

"If anyone is going to take possession of you, little badger, it's going to be me."

Up and up, in the air, soaring through the sparkling sky just as Danny had been doing so serenely earlier. Arms still tied together, Danny tried to relax in Vlad's embrace. There was nothing he could do now. He was at Vlad's mercy. Whether Vlad was rescuing him or abducting him, Danny had no way to escape, no strength to transform and get away.

His body was aching and quivering, his stomach was sloshing and rippling, his head was throbbing and burning.

But his mind was quieting and drifting.

Slipping in and out…

Mist against his skin. Clouds.

Wind in his hair…

Landing. Wind gone.

Walking…

On his back. On a hard surface.

Something cool on his face. Vlad was caressing him with a wet towel, wiping away the dried tears and dirt, cleaning and applying a moisturizing salve to his cuts.

Danny opened his eyes to see a bright light above him. His arms had been freed and were now resting beside him. He was on a table, and Vlad's snowy hair was gleaming as he stood over him, ran his hands all over him, tugged at his shirt and phased it off of him.

No. He did not like this violation.

"Stop," begged Danny with a whispered slur.

"This will all be over soon," said Vlad quietly.

The light above was blindingly hot. He was slipping away again…

The light was back. No, it probably never left. He was the one who had left. Danny opened his heavy eyes again, but everything was blurry and hazy. His veins were bristling with a flood of searing glass. He felt as if he were floating even though he was strapped down to the table and unable to—

No—

When—?

His wrists and legs were belted down. Cold air was flowing into his nostrils through a piece of tubing that wrapped behind his ears. Electrodes were taped to his bare chest, sending signals to a machine blipping nearby, its oscillating tones increasing and becoming a flurried string of panicked warning. In his right arm, palm up and by his side, he could see a catheter inserted into a prominent vein, pulsating slightly, connected to a line connected to—

—an IV drip—

No, no, this couldn't be happening.

Dear God, what was Vlad doing to him?

The older man was facing away. He was intently studying something, lines and lines of scrawled notes.

Danny put all of his effort into lifting his pounding head. He tried to speak, but his words came out choked and strangled.

Vlad turned back to him, briskly walked over to him, looked down at him with detached and clinical observation. Danny gazed up at him, pleaded with his eyes that were prickling with involuntary tears.

Vlad gently cupped his face and brushed away his tears with a thumb. Danny blinked and shuddered against the soothing contact, a tenderness that felt strangely invasive.

Vlad moved behind him. Rustling, tapping, clinking. He returned with a needled syringe, inserted it directly into his intravenous line.

A wave of sickening disorientation...

Slipping...

away...

i

n

t

o

...............................................

......................................................

_arE yOU nErvOUs?_

..................................................................

_i am_

...........

......

..

That light again.

No. Different light.

Sunlight?

Danny opened his eyes and surveyed his room. Yes, indeed, it was his room. He sat up, got up, stood up—too quickly. He fell back on his bed as his vision blackened for just a moment, but then it returned, and he felt fine. Better than fine. Great, even. No fatigue, no soreness, no headache, no nausea.

He looked down at himself, pulled at the fabric of his familiar sleepwear. Had it just been a dream?

Perhaps he hadn't gone out at all last night. Perhaps he had turned in early and just dreamt it all.

He wanted to believe that.

He shakily pulled up the sleeve covering his right arm. He held his breath and prayed that there would be nothing there.

Purpling discoloration and the tiniest prick, the smallest hole in his largest vein—

Danny shut his eyes and lowered his sleeve, clutched his arm and gritted his teeth.

But he felt fine. Normal.

Trembling, Danny climbed off of his bed and moved to his mirror, studied his face blanched with trepidation. One scabbed over slash stretched across his left cheek. Just beneath it was a deepening patch of maroon and broken capillaries, a developing bruise. He removed his clothes and looked his body over. A few more bruises and many small cuts, but he was sure those were from his encounter with Skulker and his collision with the tree.

He could see no other marks on him, nothing that alarmed him.

"Danny, you up?" his mother called from outside his door.

Danny turned to his door and stared at it.

"Danny?"

"Yes, I'm up," Danny stammered. His mother was speaking to him as she always did, checking to see that he was awake like she usually did, as if everything really was normal and well.

And the more he tried to recall the memory, the more bizarre it seemed, the more fantastic it became, the more his bewildered mind started to doubt it.

He turned back to his mirror, looked down at his hands, flexed his fingers, looked back up at his mystified expression.

If it really happened, if it really wasn't a dream…

Just what did Vlad do to him?


End file.
